A blood test to screen for colorectal cancer in average-risk individuals without symptoms accurately detected the malignancy in 83% of people confirmed to have the disease, a study released Wednesday showed.
The study was published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Researchers said the blood test’s accuracy rate for colorectal cancer is similar to at-home stool tests. It’s a promising step, they said, to developing more accessible screening tools for catching the disease early – when it’s easier to treat.
The test would could improve upon low levels of colorectal cancer screening – a major cause of cancer-related mortality in the United States that results in some 50,000 deaths each year.
Accuracy is a bad measure for the reliability. Precision and Recall (Sensitivity) would be a better measure.
The article mentions that „The blood test’s sensitivity for colorectal cancer is similar to stool-based tests and lower than that of colonoscopy, which Grady still considers the most accurate screening test for colorectal cancer.“
Thus not even providing insight into the actual benefit over colonoscopy or stool-based tests.
I didn’t study medicine but if we could lower the major barrier to people and their doctors having this info by including it in any other blood test done, e.g. not needing separate and potentially socially awkward procedure(which is the major barrier to testing), that would be an enormous increase in awareness? Without stats on what % of colon cancer evades early screening, it’s hard to say what the impact would be but if you can easily do it with an annual physical vs. asking people to have a socially awkward but more accurate oscopy done, wouldn’t that solve a big portion of cases by putting them in the funnel earlier at least and lead to better outcomes? Send someone a test result they may be positive for colon cancer and they will have approximately 0% objection to getting a colonoscopy to confirm or gather info, so the blood test could be a great solution.
I didn’t thought of it this way. I agree with you, that this would be the greatest benefit.